Nagino

Project info

These are photos of "Nagino" at the depths of mountain in Niigata, northern part of Japan.

“Nagino” is the controlled burning of mountain. This agricultural method has been done at the beginning of every August in this region. “Nagino” initializes the natural transition artificially and try to regenerate the soil with the ash. This farming way used to be done actively through the mountainside of Japan, but now there are only a few places including this settlement to inherit this way. It starts from cutting weeds growing on the slope of the mountain before pitting on fire in the night.

Once put on the fire, the ash rises to the night sky so that it intertwines with the sparks and then falls down to the slope like snow. Gradually, the mountain is covered entirely white with ash.

It says, “To return the white”; it means to start anew in Japanese. The mountain covered with white ash was just returned to the white state at the beginning.

Originally a destructive act of burning a mountain is rather leading mountains to regeneration, When you see it as a subject of a photograph, it turns into a creative subject opposite to destruction.

The appearance that the mountain of the night transformed towards regeneration by fire, ash, and men was a real imaginative scene.